viernes, 27 de noviembre de 2009

Piano (English version)

I thought it would be fun to start with piano, as we go in our instruments journey I hope you enjoy lets see what wikipedia says:

Piano

"Pianoforte" redirects here. For earlier versions of the instrument, see Fortepiano. For other uses of "Piano", see Piano (disambiguation).

The piano is a musical instrument which is played by means of a keyboard. Widely used in Western music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal.
Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and
ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical
instruments.

Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a felt covered hammer to strike steel strings. The hammers rebound, allowing the strings to continue vibrating at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a sounding board that couples
the acoustic energy to the air so that it can be heard as sound. When
the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration. Pianos are
sometimes classified as both percussion and stringed instruments. According to the Hornbostel-Sachs method of music classification, they are grouped with chordophones.

The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.

History

Early history

See also: Fortepiano and Bartolomeo Cristofori

Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon,
France, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to survive; includes an
inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo
Cristofori (ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.

Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805

The piano is founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers originating from the Persian traditional musical instrument santur. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, the earliest being the hurdy gurdy which has uncertain origins. By the 17th century, the mechanisms of keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. In a clavichord the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord
they are plucked by quills.

Centuries of work on the mechanism of the
harpsichord in particular had shown the most effective ways to
construct the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard.

The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731) of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici
as the Keeper of the Instruments.

He was an expert harpsichord maker
and was well acquainted with the previous body of knowledge on stringed
keyboard instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first
built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici
family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another
document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698.[citation needed] The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.

Cristofori's great success was in solving, without any prior
example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammer
must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it (as a tangent
remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp
the sound. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position
without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note
rapidly.

Cristofori's piano action
served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions
that followed. While Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin
strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the
clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely
controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably
louder and had more sustaining power.

Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei,
wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of
the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the
next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading
it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ
builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of
Cristofori's, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the
forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.

Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach
one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at
that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full
dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann,
the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later
instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling
Silbermann's pianos.

Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Streicher (daughter of Stein) and Anton Walter.
Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per
note, and had leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos
had the opposite coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were
black and the accidental keys white.

It was for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance
of his music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone
than today's pianos or English pianos, with less sustaining power. The
term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.

The modern piano (the pianoforte) was developed from the harpsichord
around 1720, by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. His new
instrument had a delicate pianissimo (very soft sound), a strong
fortissimo (a very loud, forceful sound), and every level in between.

The first upright piano was made around 1780 by Johann Schmidt of
Salzburg, Austria. Thomas Loud of London developed an upright piano
whose strings ran diagonally (in 1802), saving even more space.

Development of the modern piano

For more details on this topic, see Innovations in the piano.

In the period lasting from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era
piano underwent tremendous changes that led to the modern form of the
instrument. This revolution was in response to a consistent preference
by composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound,
and made possible by the ongoing Industrial Revolution with technological resources such as high-quality steel, called piano wire, for strings, and precision casting for the production of iron frames. Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the five octaves of Mozart's day to the 7¼ or more octaves found on modern pianos.

Early technological progress owed much to the firm of Broadwood. John Broadwood
joined with another Scot, Robert Stodart, and a Dutchman, Americus
Backers, to design a piano in the harpsichord case – the origin of the
"grand". They achieved this in about 1777. They quickly gained a
reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of their instruments,
with Broadwood constructing ones that were progressively larger,
louder, and more robustly constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven,
and were the first firm to build pianos with a range of more than five
octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810
(Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves
by 1820. The Viennese
makers similarly followed these trends, however the two schools used
different piano actions: Broadwoods were more robust, Viennese
instruments were more sensitive.

By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Érard firm manufactured those used by Franz Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement action,
which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen
to its maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of
repeated notes, and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When
the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz,
the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos,
and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.

One of the major technical innovations that helped to create the
sound of the modern piano was the use of a strong iron frame. Also
called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension.

The increased structural integrity of the iron frame allowed the use of
thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total
string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast iron frame was
patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock,
combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on
behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but
also claimed by Broadwood and Érard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays
firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843.
Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers
until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.

Other innovations for the mechanism included the use of felt hammer
coverings instead of layered leather hammers. Felt hammers, which were
first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, were a more consistent
material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string
tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.

Other important technical innovations of this era included changes
to the way the piano was strung, such as the use of a "choir" of three
strings rather than two for all but the lower notes, and the use of
different stringing methods. With the over strung scale, also called "cross-stringing", the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges
on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not
necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over
stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United StatesHenry Steinway Jr. in 1859.

With duplexes or aliquot
scales, which was patented in 1872 by Theodore Steinway, the different
components of string vibrations are controlled by tuning their
secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths.
Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.

Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The square piano
had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case
above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This
design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst
Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock
in the United States.

Square pianos were built in great numbers through
the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible
changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung
squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons
were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe's wood framed
instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was
due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance
and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced
strings.

The tall, vertically strung upright grand was arranged like a grand
set on end, with the soundboard and bridges above the keys, and tuning
pins below them. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for
advertising purposes. Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos were arranged in
a somewhat similar fashion in evocatively shaped cases.

The very tall cabinet piano was introduced about 1805 and was built
through the 1840s. It had strings arranged vertically on a continuous
frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard
and very large sticker action. The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, made popular by Robert Wornum around 1815, was built into the 20th century.

They are informally called birdcage pianos
because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were
distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made
popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s. The
tiny spinet
upright was manufactured from the mid-1930s until recent times. The low
position of the hammers required the use of a "drop action" to preserve
a reasonable keyboard height.

Modern upright and grand pianos attained their present forms by the
end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing
processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to
receive attention.